Lisa Unger - Die For You

“How could anything you’ve done be unforgivable?” she asked. He lowered his head at this, put his chin all the way to his chest.

“Linda.”

“I forgive you,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

She slid into him and wrapped him tight in her arms. She held on to him, her buoy against the great tides of regret and shame, guilt for the things she’d done, how she’d betrayed him. I’m so sorry , she said to his heart. I’ll never see him again .

“Linda,” he said again, pulling away from her. She looked at his face and didn’t like what she saw there. Despair. A dark flower of dread started to bloom in her center.

“Erik,” she said, releasing a breath with his name. “What is it?”

IT HAD SEEMED like only seconds after the 911 call, as I begged and pleaded with Fred to open his eyes, that police and paramedics were at the scene. The next thing I knew, Fred was lifted into the back of an ambulance, I climbed in after him, and we raced toward the hospital. More police were waiting when we arrived and Fred was wheeled away.

I stared after him, wondering if my carelessness had ended his life. I didn’t feel anything but a kind of numbness. A voice in my head kept telling me, This is not happening. Wake up .

A cop started asking me questions: What happened? How was it that I was already injured? Could I describe the men who did this to my stepfather? I asked for Detective Crowe. He was called. I was escorted to a waiting area.

I waited, pacing. Fatigue was replaced by nervous energy. I couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t keep my mind from racing back over the story of my marriage, looking for the chinks, the flaws in the plot. And there they were, the clues, the foreshadowing that the hero was really a villain, waiting behind the curtain with his dagger drawn.

But no. Life’s not so simple. People are many things, each of them true. Marcus was my husband. He was right: We were great friends and excellent lovers. That was true once, even if it didn’t matter much now.

I came back to the present when a doctor pushed into the room, told me that a bullet had grazed Fred’s head, leaving a valley over his ear but never penetrating his skull. He’d lost a lot of blood but he’d walk away from the injury. A lucky man. Then, suddenly, Detective Crowe was there with his little black notebook and expensive pen, taking a statement from me that I now barely remember giving. I wondered how he’d gotten there so fast, and he told me they’d been in Inwood, searching the apartment of Charlie Shane, my doorman, another familiar figure in my life who, it seemed, was not what he appeared. They’d found nothing useful. But Charlie had disappeared.

I vaguely recall offering Detective Crowe a recount of the events at Fred and Margie’s house. Was it skepticism that I saw on his face as I recounted the scene?

“Isabel.” There was that friendly use of my name again. “Are you leaving something out?” His pen hovered.

“Of course not,” I answered, indignant.

I felt the weight of his gaze. “Don’t be foolish,” he said quietly, moving a little closer to me.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He let an awkward minute pass, during which I looked at my cuticles in the horrid white fluorescent light. I watched nurses with their swift, quiet steps, listened to the incessant electronic rippling of a telephone that no one answered.

“You know what’s starting to bother me?” he asked finally.

“What’s that?”

“You seem to be having all these run-ins with unsavory types-FBI impersonators and European thugs-and yet you always emerge unscathed. Meanwhile, the bodies of the injured and dead litter the scene.” Poetry again, from the gentleman cop.

I fixated on the word choice a moment, as I’m prone to do, analyzed it for its appropriateness. Unscathed: without suffering any injury or harm.

“I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve ‘emerged unscathed,’ Detective. Quite the opposite.” I pointed to my head but I was thinking of the deeper injuries, my riven life, the derailed narrative of my marriage.

“Relatively speaking,” he said with an assenting lift of his shoulders. “What I meant was, there was really no reason I can see for any of these people to leave you breathing. We’re not talking about people operating with conscience. We’re talking about murderers and thieves. So I find myself asking: Why are you still alive?”

It was a good question and one I’d certainly asked myself, even posed to my sister.

“Any theories?” I asked, only half a smart-ass.

“One theory might be that you have a greater involvement in this than we initially suspected. That rather than a victim, you might be an accomplice, hiding in plain sight, playing the role of the injured wife.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Because to me, you don’t seem like the type for this sort of thing. This woman you see on the talk shows-her husband has another family in Kalamazoo, or her suitor took off with her life savings-that’s not you. You’re sharp, aren’t you? Together.”

“Maybe not sharp enough to be immune to subterfuge, but definitely too sharp to be a part of anything like this. People dead around me, my stepfather very nearly killed, all my money gone, my sister’s money? No. No.” Just the recounting of it all filled me with that dangerous cocktail of rage and fear. I realized suddenly that both of my fists were clenched hard, nails digging ruthlessly into my palms. I released them with difficulty.

“Then just tell me what you’re holding back.”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to look as earnest as possible. “I swear.”

Lies are a contagion, a virus that replicates itself. Marc’s deception was the germ that had infected me. I was sick with it, fevered with a compulsion to understand how he’d managed to deceive me and why, so I was coughing up lies of my own. The detective was right. I was withholding information. The text message from Marcus, the name given to me by Ivan, his alleged brother-those things belonged to me. It felt like all I had left. If I let him have these things, I’d have lost ownership of them as well.

“I don’t believe you,” he said simply.

“I want a lawyer.”

He raised a hand, gave me a warning look. “If you go down that road, it puts us on opposite teams.”

Oh, spare me. Did he really think he could manipulate me out of my rights?

“Our conversation ended thirty seconds ago,” I said.

The detective pressed his mouth into a thin, tight line and I saw his nostrils flare just slightly. Would he blush or pale with his frustration? I wondered. Then his cheeks fired up, a lovely rosey blush on the white of his skin. Marcus always used to go gray when he was angry. It didn’t seem healthy. Red is the color of emotion brought forth, a brilliant rush of flame that burns hot and incinerates itself. Gray is the color of ire that’s eating you up inside, hollowing you out.

Detective Crowe opened his mouth and then clamped it shut again. We had a brief staring contest, which I won. He lowered his eyes, turned and left the waiting room, the electricity of everything he had wanted to say trailing behind him. He’d have slammed the door, I’m sure, but the hydraulic hinge only allowed it to close with an unsatisfying hiss.

He wasn’t gone long-I was still staring at the door-when Linda and Erik burst through. I’d called Linda upon arriving at the hospital, quite by instinct. I barely remembered the conversation. Her arrival caused some odd combination of anxiety and relief. Trevor and Emily followed behind, holding hands, looking like bush babies with wide eyes and nervous smiles. The sight of this made me sad. If they weren’t fighting, they were scared. I had to take responsibility for everything. I’d let Marcus into our lives, and he’d damaged us all.